If you were as impressed as I was when I saw the Assassin’s Creed demo during the X06 conference and you don’t plan to get a Paystation 3 any time soon you’ll be delighted to hear that the development of the 360 version of AC is coming along nicely. The ever-lovely Jade Raymond revealed to IGN that “the hardware also allows for improved threading, which will improve even further the crowd AI”. The team is also putting a lot of effort ‘a special emphasis’ on achievements and she even hinted at a downloadable multiplayer mode.

There wasn’t much more news out of Ubisoft’s camp, except that the team is trying to put together a package of downloadable content that Raymond could only say is “something ambitious.” She hinted slightly at extended gameplay and possibly even some kind of multiplayer — the team did create a prototype multiplayer and co-op mode. But, as of now, there is still nothing to announce.

While the PlayStation 3 and 360 versions of Assassin’s Creed are virtually identical, Raymond did say that on the 360 the team is putting a special emphasis on achievements. The hardware also allows for improved threading, which will improve even further the crowd AI.

Assassin’s Creed is set for March next year on PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

The 360 version will be better? Article seemed to read that the CROWD AI (IE Not NPCs or Enemies, but simply background crowd) will be marginally better. So because the guy you walk past on your way to your mission is threaded better and potentially can do one or two more things, your gaming experience will be so much better on the 360 version? Give me a break. This is the most rediculous news ever ‘OMG THE CROWD AI WILL BE SOMEWHAT BETTER!! BEST GAME EVER!’ Forgive me for not cheering ‘woohoo’ for marginally improved crowd ai that has no real bearing on the gameplay experience.

How is it a big deal its negligable AI (read: unimportant). And as for $200 less that is so highly debatable when comparably with HD-DVD to Blu-ray the ps3 core is $100 cheaper for comparable features.

And I love how any xbox fanboy likes to use the PS3 premium to 360 premium comparrison which isn’t even apples to apples as the ps3 premium has blu-ray + wifi + card reader + 3x the size HD. If you are going to compare compare the core ps3 to the 360 which is only 1upping the 360 by blu-ray and HDMI. And then as I stated above when you add the $200 hd-dvd drive thats $100 cheaper for the comparable ps3 system.

I think the point is, the 360 is a year old system, which has a better threading processor than that of the PS3 (which was originally touted for being able to multitask and multithread), not to mention being based on the same core.

Raptor.. You’re totally wrong and obviously a sony fan. You’re comparing the ps3 with the 360 when all hardware is equal and that’s stupid. It’s the output and expirience you have to compare.

Let’s take assassin’s creed for example.
Both consoles will have this game and the developers say they can get more out of the 360 in this game.. Now let’s see what we need to play the game at it’s full potential.
ps3: the cheaper one will do it all for $500. You’ll get alot of stuff you don’t need and even more useless stuff is forced upon you when you choose the $600 version. Including bluray and wireless and big harddrive.
360: get the cheap one for $299 and add $60 for a memorycard. You’ll get the same expirience for $360 instead of $500. That’s a big difference imho.

Then there’s the fact that the developer said it could get more out of the 360 and there you have it. The cheaper 360 has the upper hand. Case closed.

And another thing; sony is claiming you’ll need 50GB bluray to get real next gen but when assassins creed comes out on a dvd9 with the same content and visuals it will kill another of sony’s hypes and claims.. Wake up and smell the koffie. Sony is bullshittin’ everyone.

PS: don’t react with something like “but ps3 gives you 60GB space, a browser, bluray blabla”. I bought a console my friend, not a entertainment system. I expect only 1 thing from a console; Give me good games for a good price and entertain me with those games. nuff said.

Get more out of the game does not = better crowd AI, if you honestly think you will have a better gameplay experience from marginally better crowd AI then you seriously need to do some thinking about what gameplay is about. And as for me being a sony fan boy lol I happen to own a 360 and 20 titles for it. And as for Disc space I think you should do a little checking first about Resistance fall of man clocking in at 22g and then with Gears of War clocking in at 7.2GB. And if you remember correctly the amount of space taken up between the beginning and end of last gen (cd to single layer dvd) was 4x. So don’t even go there about Blu-ray. And as for read speed as spoken above granted the DVD drive reads faster but what does that matter? the original Xbox had faster read speeds than the ps2 but most loading now for any large amount of data is going to be either cached on the HDD or streamed from the disc (Saints Row/GTA SA). So Read speed is harly a major issue and I am sure sony knows that. And how is comparing apples to apples equal? Thats kind of an outlandish statement to say comparing something evenly is stupid.

No crowd AI is a major part of the game or else it would be coded equally for both systems so the overal experience would be the same regardless of the difficulty (a 360 game isn’t going to be harder than a ps3 and vice versa). Now if they said Enemy AI would be different then I would say ‘wow thats cool!’ But thats not what was said. You could say crowd AI in a certain level of Hitman Blood Money was important but what does the crowd actually do in a game, its called a crowd for a reason.

he never said MARGINALLY… stop putting words in his mouse he said BETTER AI… and if you watch the demos of this game.. the crowd is a HUGE PART of this game they arent just standard NPC’s they are major parts of the game.

AND RAPTOR… read spead is VERY important especially considering the blurays larger size… the system has to stream the info to the 360 and if this isnt fast enough their will be reloads and lots of delays… And as was said already

RESISTENCE IS 22GIGS FOR CRAP REASONS!!! Mostly regional content so they only have to make 1 disc, has a bunch of prerendered footage (Wooptie do)

BTW about your cacheing, you have to READ OFF THE DA*N DISC in order to get it into the cache!

What are you stupid ? Crowd AI is a huge part it would be the same if the ps3 version could do it better, but its plain and simple the single backbone on the ps3 chip impacts negatively the threading vs the 360’s implementation … STOP SAYING ENEMY AI… WATCH THE DA*N VIDEOS … the crowd in many cases is the enemy! If you spark the crowd they can start kicking your ass or alert guards etc etc…. so stop being so arrogant.

Raptor said “Resistance fall of man clocking in at 22g and then with Gears of War clocking in at 7.2GB.”

That’s exactly my point. Resistance has a crappy code, because other developers can fit a massive, good looking game like GoW on a simple DVD.. Now tell me, what is the benefit of the bluray.. That developers can use crappy big code and lots of renderd movies in different languages? As I said before; wake up and smell the coffie.

why are so many xbox sites bad mouthing other game systems these days,everywhere i look its oooh 360 exclusive,or ooooh exclusive dl’s, any true gamer should be glad of all the great titles coming out on ALL formats wether its halo 3, mario galaxy and metal gear solid 4,alot of people are always quick to forget what sony and nintendo did for the gaming world. People should stop being bill gates minions and be more a fan of the gaming world as a whole. ( i needed to get that rant outta my system!)

That’s the way it always has been, and probably always will be. Same thing happened with the PS1 with MGS vs N64 with PDZ and GoldenEye.
It’s too bad you can’t get every single game you want if you only have one gaming console, but then again almost all of the uber-multiplatform games (like most of EA) are pretty crappy.

Because of you were to ask that and not show yourself as being bias and so carrying out the problem you are pointing out.

The question should be why are so many PS sites slagging off Nintendo and Xbox sites, why are so many Nintendo sites slagging off Xbox and PS sites and why are so many Xbox sites slagging off PS and Nintendo sites?

The answer competition and childish jelousy.

You buy any one of the systems and you will probably want to defend it against uneducated ranting from other people who just blindly slag off anything they don’t own, and so the war begins.

Personally I like them all, but refuse to get a PS3 until the price drops as this is just too much for a console. I know people are going to jump to its defense and go on about all the gimmicks it has, but I don’t use wi-fi (prefer a connection that doesn’t break every 15 minutes) and don’t want to be forced to use Blu-Ray when it certainly isn’t looking like the format that is going to come out on top anyway (anyway, if I want a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD i’ll buy a dedicated player).

And finally this is the Xbox section of the IC sites and so pro Xbox, just like if Scotland beat England at a football game the Scottish press would give a different story to the English press.

HAHAHAHAH… saying games or downloads are exclusive to the 360 is not bashing! The fact is the 360 has alot more exclusives than was ever thought and your taking it as offence because every new exclusive the 360 gets is a slap to the ps3 fanboy face.

Of course its not 2x the power of the 360, The only major difference is the Cell which is performance wise more powerful then the 36’s tri core PPC but to actually develop for the cell and its 7 SPEs is completely different matter entirely. I don’t think anyone really expected the ps3 to be a whole lot more powerful (graphics wise) than the 360, where it is more powerful is in its bang for its buck category and just all the things it can do out of the box, that is powerful compared to the 360 which the core doesn’t even work very well out of the box without some kind of storage format. Powerful is simply a buzz term that most people seem to associate with graphics and that is far from always the case.

But if you look at the point you are making here compared to the one you tried to shoot me down for in PSIC you are at odds with yourself.

The PS3 was touted to the public as having better graphics that was always the impression people were given but it has not lived up to the hype, so not really delivering what the marketed themselves with.

No the ps3 was always touted as being more POWERFUL, most people just assumed that that term ment graphically. Welcome to the world of spin, you should be quite familiar with it from owning a 360 like myself.

You don’t even know the cost of PS “Live” yet you fool, hows about waiting until it is infront of you before you start quoting.

And before you start spouting about PS Live being free, its only been said that Sony ain’t going to charge you, but the developers are to be supplying the servers, not Sony. So lets wait and see if they charge you before going on about cost.

Developers where already hosting ps2’s servers and no one was getting charged the only issue that came up was pre-mature cancelation of hosting which I would have to say was mostly due to the problem of decentralization of the system, so if I wanted to play an EA game and a Capcom game i’d have to make a user account with both companies to play on their online services. Pain in the ass causing a lot of people not even to bother getting online but now with a centralization like xbox live and features like xbox live to build up a community I expect the ps3 online to do a lot lot better than its ps2 counterpart, better than live? it’ll all depend on how far the developers are willing to go to make sure their children flourish in the wild.

To bad i dont want wifi or hddvd on my 360… and i dont want wifi or bluray… so take your 600$ and go play with yourself.

And if you want to get into XBL vs PSL… sorry to say but atleast 360 games have the da*n multiplayer from launch, unlike ps3 games that are completely loosing multiplayer and shipping without ANY!

And the fact that the PSL is basically up to the developers to develop fully instead of a framework like XBL i mean developers are bi*ching about it and certain games are loosing multiplayer give it a break.

Its like buying a car… I DONT WANT THE DA*N SUNROOF ITS HOT IN THE CARIBBEAN! Esepecially when we’re not sure if your sunroof is even the one people will want in a year.

When you add it up like that it is more then the ps3, but most people dont need a HD-dvd or blu-ray drive, or even a wireless a adapter. The ps3 forces people to buy all those things. With the xbox you can chose what you need/want, so for most people it ends up cheaper.

Who cares, as long as all three consoles are succseful we will get plenty of new IP like Assassins Creed. Does Sony,Microsoft or Nintendo pay these Fanboy’s to rant about nothing, no, so why do they waste their short lives worrying about shit like this. Let’s just hope games like Assassins Creed live upto the hype whatever the crowd AI is doing on whatever machine it’s ruuning on.

I just want that build Jade was running at X06 to be put onto XBL. PLEASE. This game is going to be so much fun, I can tell already. And yes, I mark huge for POP, so this series is a natural fit for me.

I have shown the footage about 30 times now and everyone who sees it puts it down for a must-have.

Man, if Spring 07 holds up, we will get this game AND Halo 3 at the same time. You can pretty much kiss my spring goodbye after that.

I believe you can but I do not know for sure. I’ve been thinking about doing that for my GF’s little brother as we set him up on a free account and then they added a year onto it and charged my bank account, needless to say microsoft got a call from me to give me back my money, and to those of you who will say ‘you should have read the fine print’ no company should be charging me for something i didn’t indicate i wanted to keep.

What’s really interesting about this “news”, besides of it beeing a large pack of ammo for the fanboy wars, is the fact that a developer who works with both platforms actually HINTS CAREFULLY at one beeing SLIGHTLY “better” than the other in a wee tiny little bit. To me that is a first in this generation of the console war. Of course the M$ exclusive studios tell you how powerfull the 360 is and you get to hear the very same thing from the Sony exclusive studios all the time. But this kind of “technical judgement” from a developer is VERY unusual to say the least. Looks like Phil pissed off sweet, little Jade or something

In the grand scheme of things this is indeed a remarkable thing for her to say. Chick got balls

Except this isn’t an M$ exclusive studio. The game is being developed by the same people for both platforms. It would have been quickly dismissed had it been a first-party dev or so, but it’s not, so it’s fairly interesting.

Anyway, you can add the HD-DVD drive to the 360 price if you wish, but the install base of HDTV in the UK is sub-5%. Now, why should the other 95% of people pay more, for something they aren’t going to use? Choice is the key!

“sub -5%” makes sense if you are selling a DVD player (something everyone will use.) But a game system is targeted towards a demographic (gamers) who are more likely to own HD equipment by 10 fold than the rest of the population, according to Microsoft themselves HD penetration into the gamer demographic is around %50.

I’d be willing to bet that it is nowhere near that in the UK and the majority of Europe. We (the UK) have only had HD tv content for a few months unlike the US where HD CRTs have been available for years.

I’m sure the rate at which it is increaing is pretty large, but how many of the people buying a new flat panel tv are even going to bother using anything but composite and scart? People don’t care about the picture, they just want a shiny tv. Half of the people I know still have a 4:3 picture going in to their widescreens, I am always meesing around with tv settings for people.

The general public = idiots.

I really think HD-DVD and BR are just SACD and DVD-Audio all over again.

I really think HD-DVD and BR are just SACD and DVD-Audio all over again.

I agree 100%. I’m in the USA and have HDTV now, but I still don’t want BluRay or HD-DVD. The picture quality improvement over my upsampled DVDs is not enough to justify the player’s cost, much less the cost of replacing my DVD collection.

HA! Eat it Paystation III! O.K. I consider myself to be a strong supporter of the X-box 360 platform but not having a larger storage device such as HD-DVD or BLU-RAY disc is going to hurt in the long run. Wonder why games on the 360 or only 10 to 15 hours long + have V-sync problems + pop- in ,up thats why???? BLU-RAY bad for movies, Good for games !!!!

yeah lol v-sync and pop ups due to lack of space is a good one, I once read someone post that PS3 game will cost more to develop since blu-ray discs are larger they require more time to debug. Good stuff. But the lack of space will most likely hurt the 360 in the long run with a 1st gen game like gears of war already clocking in at 7.2gb

ummm no… vsync and length of game have 0 to do with space.. oblivion was a 300-400 hour game last i checked… and had incredible visuals and it was a launch title… and the world was emense… so please dont talk what you dont know…

VSYNC and Other optimization problems are programmer related NOT size or hardware related.

I thought the idea was that the 360’s three processors were better at parallel processing tasks? At least that is what John Carmack said at E3 last year. It would seem that the 360 is better at handling multiple tasks in tandom vs. pumping out raw processing power, like the PS3. Sounds like the 360 is better if you want better gameplay and “maybe” the PS3 is better graphics wise (although i highly doubt it, just look at freakin mass effect and bioshock). Not too mention NO RUMBLE! I think the PS3 fanboys will not realize how much they are going to miss rumble until its gone.

NO … the ps3 is better at VIDEO DECODING, the damn chip was made to work in bluray players… sorry to burst peoples bubbles its got alot of raw horsepower yes but its not the kind of raw horsepower that the devs actually need..

LETS STATE THE FACT HERE GUYS WHETHER SMALL OR BIG HERE IT IS

– 360 Released a full year before the PS3.

– 360 is confirmed by a NON-MICROSOFT studio to be better at threading than the PS3

– 360 with a 1 year head start, can counter just about any price drop that may happen within the text year, since they are already beginning their cost cutting excercises and will be to profit WELL before the ps3 considering estimates from meril lynch put the ps3 at a loss of around 400-500$ EACH

– 360 gives choice, and its up to the consumer to choose if they want HD or not.. especially considering that bluray is loosing the media war right now with sales increasing in hddvd from 8 to 1 two months ago to 11 to 1 in september… and hardware standalone sales also ahead drastically in hddvd… and more than double the number of hddvd titles as bluray… yes sorry to burst peoples bubbles but bluray is indeed another format from sony along with SACD, Betamax, MD, UMD and to an extent even MemoryStick considering its horrible uptake vs SD.

I really hope that all systems do well as the competition is healthy. The three companies have taken three very different approaches to this generation of hardware and yes - each approach has its pros and cons, but as always, developers will learn how to get the most out of each platform. We are all gamers and it is in all our interests for all three companies to survive this latest “console war”. I’d still like to have a choice when the next generation comes around.
–
For the record (if it really matters), I own an XBOX, an XBOX360, a PS2, every generation of SPECTRUM, a NES, an ATARI 2600 and an Intellivision system.

This is the video I am talking about. I grabbed an AVI of this, and show it to whomever wants to see it around here. This game will be a blast. Like, I want this demo build on XBOX LIVE!!!! This game looks like so much fun.

I like how all the sony fanboys need to start talking about how PS3 has bluray this and 50GB that when someone challenges it with the 360. Why get off of the facts that the 360 version of assassins is better due to better hardware? Dont dismiss the crowd in this game, the gameplay relies on crown AI. Watch the demo. You need to sneak around, pick pocket from the crowd. You need to sneak through the crown to your victom. You need to kill him in front of this crowd, and the crown reacts. At least on the 360 it does and then you have to escape from this crowd. Oh dont go dismissing the crowd just because the PS3 cannot handle the crowd AI

I like how you don’t know what you’re talking about. Here’s something about system power and AI for ya, from the development of NBA 2K7 for PS3:

“Speaking of taking advantage of the PS3’s power, the team has been using the computational power of the system to enhance a large number of the standard features that the game is known for. For instance, the cloth physics of jerseys and shorts has been assigned to one SPU on the PS3 instead of multiple cores on the 360 so that it can move more realistically than ever without taking away processing power for the rest of the game. But you’ll find that there’s just as much realism off the court in the PS3 version than on the court. Instead of running cutscenes during timeout situations, the development team has created real time AI that governs the cheerleaders, mascots, floor cleaners and even the crowd.”

“Visually, the game has been taken up to a new level, particularly in how the game action is rendered. Not only have the in-game visuals been beefed up thanks to the power of the system, but according to Thomas, the way the PS3 renders pixels gives the game a richer appearance than the 360 version. It looks much more organic and lifelike, and if you thought you were watching a real game on the 360, just wait till you see it on the PS3.”

This stuff seems much less ambiguous than the Assassin’s Creed AI statements. PS3 is stronger.

Furthermore lets talk about this 50GB thing. Lets talk about Resistance that looks crappy compaired to both Lost Planet and Gears of War.
Read up on what procedural synthesis is here: http://arstechnica.com/ar...aedia/cpu/xbox360-1.ars/2
The 360 does not need 50GB of space because it doesnt need to store data models on disk The 360 generates all the data models on the fly using very small bits of code. MS calles it compression I call it inovation. The 360 can do with (gb what will take PS3 more than 50GB to do and with the PS3 some textures will need to be used over and over agian. That sucks!

Now I will be the first to admit that I don’t have a grasp on the whole conversation on how the bits do what the do inside the 360/PS3.

But one thing I do notice is that 99% of the people defending the 360 do it calmly with facts that they can back up from a number of different respected sources.

When the PS3 is defended it is done with venom abusing everything else that could be considered a threat, then going on to quote “facts” that they have been given direct from Sony but are able to back up very little as the damn thing ain’t even out yet.

Surely both consoles were designed by very competent engineers with lots of planning. Both Sony and Microsoft figured out how much HD space they’d need to support their respective processors and graphics capabilities.

Neither company wanted to throw in extra HD capacity as some kind of giveaway. Likewise, neither wanted to cripple their console with too little space. The consoles have what they need.

The PS3 having more HD capacity is only an advantage if the two consoles use the HD in the same way. In this respect there are some similarities and some differences.

Until people are complaining that their 360 hard drives are full, I don’t think there’s much to argue about.

That day may come, but MS is a computer software company. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a way to allow more 360-PC interaction, rendering the advantage of a huge hard drive moot.

I don’t care about the PS3 card reader either. My existing card reader plugs into the USB port on the front of my 360, plus the 360 can read any card, thumb drive, CD-RW, etc I share from my PC anyway.

A reason alot of playstation fans turned to the xbox is b/c Sony promises to much with their systems and under-delivers. I’m surprised that Sony has such a strong user base still. I remember reading about how PS2 was to revolutionize gaming with its 4-D worlds. What the heck is a 4 Dimensional game?

Another note is that Sony boasted about how much Assissin’s creed was a PS3 exclusive game and Look at how good the gfx are compared to the X360. When now it’s been announced that its coming to the 360 with no graphical disadvantage but added AI improvements over its PS3 counterpart.

Here’s something about system power and AI for ya, from the development of NBA 2K7 for PS3:

“Speaking of taking advantage of the PS3’s power, the team has been using the computational power of the system to enhance a large number of the standard features that the game is known for. For instance, the cloth physics of jerseys and shorts has been assigned to one SPU on the PS3 instead of multiple cores on the 360 so that it can move more realistically than ever without taking away processing power for the rest of the game. But you’ll find that there’s just as much realism off the court in the PS3 version than on the court. Instead of running cutscenes during timeout situations, the development team has created real time AI that governs the cheerleaders, mascots, floor cleaners and even the crowd.”

“Visually, the game has been taken up to a new level, particularly in how the game action is rendered. Not only have the in-game visuals been beefed up thanks to the power of the system, but according to Thomas, the way the PS3 renders pixels gives the game a richer appearance than the 360 version. It looks much more organic and lifelike, and if you thought you were watching a real game on the 360, just wait till you see it on the PS3.”

This stuff seems much less ambiguous than the Assassin’s Creed AI statements. PS3 is stronger.